Peter Leonard - Voices of the Dead

“I had to enlarge them four hundred per cent to get anything, that’s why there’s so much grain.” Colette took out scissors, trimmed off the excess and fit the quadrants together on the kitchen table. “Recognize him?”

“Ernst Hess,” Harry said.

“Why would he be at a Blackshirt rally?”

“My guess, he’s sympathetic to their cause, but with his Christian Social Union affiliation he can’t take the chance being seen endorsing them.”

“How do you know about the CSU?”

“It’s in the paper. Right here.” He turned the article around to show her. “They’re having a board meeting tomorrow at nine a.m.”

She glanced at him and smiled.

“I’ve seen that look before. You have something in mind, don’t you?”

Harry spent the night at Colette’s again. In the morning they drove to Hess’ apartment building, arriving at 7:30, parked across the street between two Volkswagens and waited. “Why’re you so sure he’s here?”

“He was at the rally until after ten last night, and he has to be downtown at nine o’clock. If you had a morning appointment, would you go all the way to Schleissheim, or stay in the city?

“Makes sense,” Harry said.

“After the meeting there will be a press conference, so they can tell the media what they talked about, what decisions were made. Hess will be gone for hours.”

“How do you know somebody else isn’t in the apartment?”

“If somebody is we’ll deal with it.”

“I like your confidence.”

“Harry, if you don’t take risks you don’t get a story.”

“How do we get in?”

“That, I am not sure.”

“It’s an important detail, don’t you think?”

Colette had brought a thermos of coffee, poured them each a cup and handed him a piece of strawberry-cheese strudel on a napkin. They ate breakfast, watching the building.

At 8:20‚ a black Mercedes sedan pulled up across the street from them. Harry recognized the driver, Hess’ bodyguard, and ducked down in his seat. Rausch got out of the car, closed the door, and took his time scanning the the cars parked on both sides of the street. He went in the building and came out ten minutes later, Hess behind him, the big man’s eyes moving, alert. He opened the rear door for Hess, then walked around the car, got in behind the wheel and drove off.

Harry sat up, glanced at Colette. “You ready?”

They stood in front of the building. The door was locked. Harry studied the directory. Hess was in apartment 4B. Colette pushed the button, heard the buzzer, but nothing happened, maybe proving that no one was in the apartment. But that didn’t help them much.

“How’re we going to get in?”

Colette said, “Wait here. I have an idea.” She headed down the sidewalk.

“Hey, where’re you going?”

She turned the corner and disappeared.

Colette circled around to the rear of the six-storey building that took up a quarter of the block. She went in the employees’ entrance and down a staircase into a subterranean room, huge furnace glowing hot, the smell of fuel oil, and a network of pipes. It was dark but she could see a man in a green custodial uniform, wrench in his hands, working on a leaking pipe. She surprised him. Doubted many of the high-rent tenants wandered down into the bowels of the building.

“May I help you, Fräulein?”

He was short, stocky, about her age. Needed a bath and a shave.

“I am looking for the engineer.”

“I am the engineer.”

“I have a problem,” she said, pausing for effect. “I locked my keys in the apartment along with an important file.”

“What number?” He seemed shy but willing to assist a woman in distress.

“4B. I work for Herr Hess. He is giving the presentation in one hour. If I don’t get it—” She let the custodian imagine what would happen to her. “Do you have a key?”

“Have you talked to the manager, Herr Steiger?”

“This is the second time I have done this. I am embarrassed.” She looked at him and smiled. “Could you help me, please?”

Harry waited a few minutes, no idea what happened to her. Went back to the car, sat in the driver’s seat, not sure what to do. And then the door to the building opened, Colette standing there looking for him. Harry got out of the car, crossed the street.

She led him to the elevator and up to the fourth floor. The door to Hess’ apartment was unlocked. “How’d you do it?”

“I turned on the charm.”

Harry grinned. She had it to turn on.

The interior was big and spacious, professionally decorated, with views of the ancient spires of Altstadt on one side and the modern glass office buildings of downtown Munich on the other. They walked through the apartment. There were two bedrooms, one larger than the other, an office, kitchen and living room.

Harry checked the closets and drawers in the bedrooms, looking for a gun, a Nazi uniform, but didn’t find anything incriminating. Colette checked the other rooms, went through the utility closet, refrigerator, oven. Nothing. They met in the office. It had a sleek desk with a black granite top on a chrome frame. Behind the desk was a credenza with a matching top and custom wooden file drawers, two banks of three. The drawers on the left were unlocked. Envelopes, stationery, stamps, letter opener in the first one. Pens, paper clips, tape, stapler in the second drawer, and files in the deep third drawer.

The drawers on the other side were locked. He took out the letter opener, jammed the tip in the lock and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. Colette walked out of the room without saying anything, came back a few minutes later with a hammer and a screwdriver.

“Let me try.” She got on her knees and pounded the screwdriver into the lock, gripped the handle, turned left and it opened.

Harry said, “Where’d you learn that?”

“A few years ago I wrote an article on how to pick a lock.”

He opened the first drawer and found a box of 9 mm Parabellum cartridges. Now they were getting somewhere. The next one was filled with a strange assortment of things. He reached in, taking the stuff out, putting it on the desktop: a couple pairs of eyeglasses, woman’s suede gloves, gold Star of David, watches, bracelets, women’s panties, necklaces, a diamond ring, a wedding ring, silver locket.

“Harry, what is all of this?”

“I don’t know.”

Colette opened the third drawer, took out a file folder with several cracked sepia-tone photographs, shuffled through them.

“Harry, look at these.”

The first one was a young SS officer in uniform, posing, blank expression. Harry recognized him immediately. Took out the mug shot Taggart had given to him and unfolded it. Now he could see the young Nazi in the older man’s face.

“Harry, who is that?”

“Unterscharführer Ernst Hess,” Lisa said.

Harry was in her office at the ZOB. He’d dropped Colette off and come right over. Why didn’t he recognize Hess before? Sitting across the table from him at Les Halles. Harry showed her another shot, Hess grinning, dead bodies behind him, piled up in a mass grave. “I remember the look of satisfaction on his face,” Harry said, “after shooting my father and eleven others with a machine gun, saying, ‘This is how you kill Jews.’”

“He looks so ordinary,” Lisa said. “He could be a plumber or a taxi driver.”

“What did you expect?” Harry said. “He’d have horns and a tail?”

“Hess was only there for a short time,” Lisa said, “a few weeks, touring Dachau and its sub-camps.”

Martz turned his head a couple times left to right and rubbed his neck. “Harry, don’t get old. It’s no fun.” He paused. “It was very unusual — I would say unheard-of for the SS to murder Jews en masse outside the camp. Why go to the trouble? They would just shoot us in the yard, the Schiesstand , sending a message, scaring the hell out of those who saw it or heard about it.”